That the
Christian religious tradition is not necessarily scientific or rational is well known to
everyone. The ongoing battle between science and religion, or church and state in the
West, cannot be missed by any thoughtful person. The rejection of the authority of the
Church was necessary for the development of science in the first place.

Many Western religious groups today still promote a literal Biblical
idea of creation that the world is only six thousand year old, which is a total denial of
the evidence of science. On the other hand, the Hindu and Buddhist account of the origin
of the universe, with multi-billion year cycles of creation and destruction, is much more
in harmony with modern science, though these Eastern religions were not originally looked
to as anything rational by the Western mind.

The Western scientific background moreover originates from the pre-Christian Greeks.
Yet in terms of religion the ancient Greeks-as all the pre-Christian peoples of Europe-had
a religion like the oriental or the Hindu and were Pagans.